Electric Heat Vs Gas Heat

14 years ago

Hi everyone,

My wife and I bought our house last Sept. which was built in 1964. We live in Missouri. It is 1250 sq ft not including basement. Basement is another 750 or so. It's a split level with kitchen & living room on slab and bedrooms above the partly finished basement.

Currently, the heat is radiant ceiling heat. Every room has a thermostat so you can isolate rooms and not heat if you don't want. Bathrooms have wall heat units. The AC unit is a 5 ton (I think, at least 4 I know.) Which I'm told is way overkill.

We are getting bids on a new HVAC system and are trying to decide on gas vs electric. I have bids for both with heat pumps as options. For example one bid had $1900 for 2 ton 15Kw electric furnace and $2500 for 60,000btu 95% gas. 13 seer heat pump added $1500 to the furnace price and 15 seer added $2100 but carried a $500 rebate. AC units are $1250 for 13 seer and $2200 for 15 seer.

Gas prices are .90/ccf and electric rates are 10.6 cents/kwh. We have no gas line to our house. A new line would cost $850 to run from center street to outside our house.

We had R-13 in our attic. I added more but probably only boosted to R-25. Adding more is out until a new roof is needed as the roof pitch is about 3/12. Our highest bill during the winter was $400. That was using 2 bedrooms at night and turning down kit and living room to 50. By day, it was 1 bedroom (other was turned down to 60) and kitchen and living room. We would occasionally (less than 10% of the time) run the basement, bathroom wall heaters and other rooms.

Ductwork is in the attic for both parts of house and is 3/4" thick insulated fiber duct. I tried to blow a lot of insulation over it but probably didn't do much.

My questions are:

-I know loads of heat were lost through the ceiling with radiant heat, but would a new furnace with heat pump cost more monthly to do the entire house in winter?

-Which seems to be more cost-effective scenario?

Electric or Gas?

-Do heat pumps really work that well? And even with my poorly insulated house, are heat pumps still better to have than a traditional furnace and AC?

-What tonnage should I have or does 2 sound right? Bids say anywhere from 2 up to 3.5 ton. One guy said a ton to 600 sq ft living excluding basement. Sound right?

Money is an object and I've been leaning toward the Elec with 15 seer heat pump as it will run around $3500 after rebate. Gas is the way I would like to go but the gas line price is an additional cost taking us away from a $4000 ballpark. But maybe it is justified to have it installed.

Hope I didn't bog anyone down with details. I wanted to paint the clearest picture of our scenario. Let me know what you think.

Thanks

Joel

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Comments (4)

countryboymo
14 years ago
Whatever you choose you should go heat pump. The total cost to get the gas in the house and connected needs to be known and then calculate the difference in total install cost. How long you plan to live here plays in also.

You want a good heat pump... demand defrost..and a txv at the indoor coil for humidity control for sure.

Quality t-stat that has controls to lock out the heat pump and or furnace depending on outside temperature.

Electric or gas depending on how long you plan to stay. I would go gas so you can leverage onto whichever is cheaper per btu.
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david_cary
14 years ago
Gas is usually 1/2 what electric strips are.

There are too many variables to say how much less it will cost. $850 is not a lot compared to what some people have to pay. Another $500 more for the furnace. Now you have something that could save you $500 a year - so 3 year payback. On the other hand, it might only save you $200 a year and your payback is 7 years - still worth it if you are staying and maybe even in resale value.

Switch to NG on your hot water probably saves $100 a year on average - might cost $600 or so. Or switch to tankless for $1200 and save $200. Tankless might be easier to install so the difference might be less.

NG is a cheap way to heat things. Not as cheap as a heat pump when it is 35 degrees out but still pretty cheap.

Look at your total annual bill because a terrible $400 might be $1000 annual or closer to $2000 annual. Then think about chopping that in 1/2 or more (with dual fuel).
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If you were going to heat water for hydronic heating you would use and appliance designed for that purpose (boiler) Being that your in SF, I doubt your water temp would need to exceed 160 degrees. Your best bet is to use a modulating condensing boiler that would have efficiencies up to 96% with nat gas.
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theblaiser While probably not telling you anything you don't already know, you have two of the most expensive forms of fuel for winter heating. I am attaching a fuel comparison calculator which will give you a close estimate. You will need the efficiency on your LP gas stove/inserts. Of course the baseboard electric heat has no efficiency. Just plug in the electric cost and the calculator will spit out a cost for baseboard heat. It appears LP is more expensive using an average electric cost of $.115/kw. A high eff heat pump would save you some significant $$$. Hope this is helpful. IMO Here is a link that might be useful: Fuel Comparison Calculator
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I have no idea whether the photovoltaic panels could produce enough energy enough of the time to offset the small cost disadvantage of electricity, but your numbers are right. Rather than using an electric resistance water heater (the standard type) have you considered a heat pump water heater? This would be two to three times as efficient as a standard water heater, so you could give yourself a huge cost advantage over gas. Then you could use the power from the PV panels for something else. I am not sure about the heat recovery rates of this type of water heater, so in many places I don't know how well it would work for space heating, but since it's not too cold in San Francisco, it might be worth considering. Here is a link that might be useful: Heat Pump Water Heaters
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If you already have a boiler and hydronic heating in your house, it makes sense to tap into the existing system and heat the basement off the same boiler. Your cost for heating the basement will be only incrementally higher than what is now costing you to heat the rest of the house. Electric heating in the basement would would probably cost many times more. If the heating guy who gave you the $2900 price is the same guy who installed your boiler or heating system, then it probably makes sense to have him do the work. He knows the system. You might ask him if there's any other way of tapping into the existing system that might cost less. Perhaps running baseboard radiators that begin on the wall enclosing the boiler room (I'm assuming your boiler is somewhere in the basement), or something else. If the heating guy is someone that hasn't worked in your house before, then why not get a couple of other estimates from other firms. Another outfit may offer a better solution that's less costly, or perhaps, just have lower overhead and do the work for less. Since you plan to be in the house for many years, I'd encourage you to avoid the electric solution. What you save up front will probably cost you much more in the long run.
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neohioheatpump
14 years ago
definetly get a heatpump. If you want to be fancy, get gas with the heatpump and then you have dual fuel. Gas is pretty cheap right now but it could go up again. Gas is cheap for heating hot water.

Keep in mind with gas you'll pay the monthly service fee even if you use little or none. Some people would rather spend that money on electric. Their are fancy heatpump hot water tanks around now that save money.

You have cheap electric. I think missouri is well served with heatpumps.
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zippyhvac
14 years ago
I'll post a calculator I found below, but based on the figures you posted, it would cost $31 per million btus for electric resistance heating ( your electric furnace option), $15.50 for the same amount of heat using a heat pump, or $10.50 for natural gas.

The wrinkle with using natural gas is that to fully take advantage of the available savings, you would want a gas water heater, clothes dryer, and probably a gas stove - The water heater would require a chimney, and buying a houseful of appliances doesn't sound like an option for you - keep in mind, all of those appliances would require gas pipe inside the house as well, which wouldn't be included in your $850 cost to get the gas to the house. Plus, you would likely incur permit and inspection fees for a changeover.

Based on what you've posted, In your situation, I'd probably get a top-shelf heat pump for heating and cooling the house, and possibly a heat-pump water heater as well.

I've posted a link below so you can run your own numbers

Here is a link that might be useful: energy cost comparator - requires microsoft excel
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Electric Heat Vs Gas Heat

Comments (4)

countryboymo

david_cary

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